Learning How To Share
by scullyseviltwin
Summary: It hurts him to look at her sometimes but he can’t help it.


_Word to Golden Grasshopper for liking beer.

* * *

_ It hurts him to look at her sometimes but he can't help it.

He is pained and painful, sinning away pieces of himself without realizing it. Bits of him fall away as he passes through the evenings, collecting evidence as she followed alongside him, picking up little pieces of him, hoping he wouldn't notice.

There are things she wants from him, things that she needs to want. There are things he needs to give, too, but they won't come. Days alone in his bed, he thinks about all the things he wants to tell someone, needs to tell someone. His head, heart is so heavy with years of held emotions, words prying to break free from this throat.

But they fester; they burn holes in his stomach and when he looks at her and knows how she likes to listen he nearly vomits because... just because it hurts.

There are clippings in a box, hidden in the back of his closet that he sometimes looks at when he's too lonely to breathe or when he's had too much scotch. They're simple things, some of them. Particulars are in the form of box scores, remnants of a ball game he'd found particularly meaningful; they are in the form of ticket stubs from the theater and articles about his mother's gallery.

The obituary for his elementary school best friend.

Maybe it's because he outlived Ricky Desmond, maybe it's because two on the rocks on an empty stomach can make you do strange things, but he laughs and folds it in half, places it back into the box with no amount of care and filters through until he's scratching the bottom.

He holds the box up with one hand, scotch dangerously close to the other, and wonders what sort of voodoo he could work with the contents. There are pictures within as well, some yellowing, some not.

There's one of his father, back when Gil was young, standing in their backyard next to a grill, smiling. There's a beer in his hand of course, and from the breadth of the smile and of what he can remember about his childhood it was most likely his fourth. At first it was a nightly drink and then, as the nights passed and his hours were longer he became a silhouette of himself, passing between work and home without so much as a word. He was a bad husband and a bad father, but he was a good man.

When his mother would cry late at night, Gil would look at the roses on the kitchen table, flowers grown specifically for her and wonder if that was what love really was. There is a dried rose petal inside too, about to disintegrate.

There's another one, more recent. Warrick and Catherine are there, Warrick's hair in dreadlocks, Catherine's impossibly long. Other co-workers are in it as well but he doesn't remember their names; they don't matter. He wonders why he has the picture in the first place and turns it over, noticing her distinct scrawl; Catherine hasn't changed-not really-in years. "More of this," it says, with a scribble of a 'C' concluding the sentiment.

He looks young in the picture and rather drunk. He would have to be, he's caught mid-smile, his chin in the air, arm around an anonymous set of shoulders, Warrick and Catherine flanking them, also laughing. Grissom bets it was fun, but he can't remember so it mustn't have been that great a time.

There are snippings from college newspapers and obscure, artsy postcards that his mother sent him.

There are no pictures of her, if there were, he'd be worried. She's too alive to be in his box, no matter how beautiful or cherished she is. She doesn't belong tossed it with the ticket snub he'd thought to save after catching the Bridges to Babylon tour, doesn't belong hidden beneath an intensely random pack of magnolia seeds.

But they are in the box and once something was in the box, it stayed.

He places the box on the floor and kicks it and he listens to the scattered skittering of the heavy cardboard against the imperfections in the floor. Big body flopping back into the chair, he sends a bit of his drink sloshing over the rim of the glass. The sound of it splattering on the floor draws his eyelids down; he doesn't know why he is so tired.

Memories needed to be shared because if they weren't they became a burden on the soul. His are in that box, hidden in the shadows beneath his large, cumbersome table. Those are the things he has, the ghosts of other ghosts, nothing too substantial to cling to other things, far too faded and important to shed light on them.

But he needs to; he wants to tell her everything about himself because he feels he knows everything about her. From the stolen moments he has of her. Sara exiting her vehicle and Sara picking up her mail; and Sara doing something so mundane that when he becomes entranced he's sure that he's losing it.

He probably is, at this point.

She is undeniably plain. Perhaps it's her mind that accentuates her soft curves or maybe it's because he's been telling himself that she's plain that she's really beautiful. He loves her lipstick, a shade too light, sometimes smeared on haphazardly and he loves that her jeans didn't fit quite right, hiding the lovely curve of the bottom of her backside. There really is something to be said about her singing to herself, losing herself in the evidence: when she sings he can watch her for as long as he likes.

He's fifteen and he's fifty and he knows he shouldn't be like he is but he _is_ and there's really no way for him to change it. People don't really change, they move through osmosis, subtlety shifting until they're something else entirely and yet exactly the same. If he was moving, he was glass; he'd never get there, it would take too long.

She is knocking at his door; he knows the knock because he really _does_ know her. The box is still in the shadows, taunting him, asking him to fill it with her. He bypasses the box and opens the door. He has a lot in the moment, knowing that she's before him and he doesn't have her.

He has his voice, he has a sliver of courage spurred by the liquid in his stomach and brains, and he has his heart, so he uses all three simultaneously, pulling her inside. "I needed you today, I need you now."

There are rifts in his speech, inflections where he should put far more meaning into few short words. It's not how he wants to say it at all; they are urgent, those words, nearly as urgent as his fingers on her face, as though touching her skin will reveal to him why she has shown up in the first place. Maybe it is his memories that beckoned her... "Why?"

She is... innocence and everything; she is standing before him, still plain, still brilliant, still bare. Her eyes are naked boring something that needs no explanation. In his gaze she is whole and perfect and still _everything_. "I ran out of time," Sara takes his hand and he feels warm, hot, burning. "So did you... I think we ran out here together."

There is a smile on his lips, one too long in the making and it nearly breaks his face. "You don't make sense."

They are learning to hate alone, there together. "I know, I just thought-"

"I get it," he whispers and pulls back from her, his fingers skimming over a cheek as he does so. He leads her to the chair he had previously vacated and urged her to sit.

She does and he smiles, bends to pick up the box.

He wants to touch her again so badly but he knows he won't stop if he starts. And then he won't sleep and neither will she and all they really need is this quiet space together, that's all they need right now. There is room for love later.

"Sara, can I tell you some things?"

Of course he can.

"Of course you can," she says, and he does.

Lots and lots of things.


End file.
